Dot-to-dot puzzles are a great way to teach children hand-eye coordination and numbering sequences. By joining the dots, a child draws the outline to a picture which can then be coloured in. It’s a great learning tool that provides hours of fun.
These pictures initially look very confusing, but gradually the picture becomes more defined as more dots are joined together. Life is rather like a dot-to-dot puzzle, I feel. So often, we feel confused about our lives, where we’re heading, what’s happening to us, and we often need the benefit of hindsight (that perfect 20/20 vision!) to see what God has been doing in those periods when it didn’t look like He was doing anything.
One of the purposes of studying the Bible is to try to ‘connect the dots’. We don’t understand Scripture in isolation; Scripture interprets Scripture (particularly true in the case of Ps 110, where the New Testament writers refer to it so frequently to give us further clarity and understanding on the role of Messiah and His willing troops.) In that psalm, we see a variety of dots which the New Testament expound at length, namely that Jesus is:
- Lord (see Phil 2:6-11)
- King (see Rev 19:11)
- the Great High Priest (see Heb 4:14-10:18)
- the Judge (see Acts 17:31)
We also see from the psalm something of our role as God’s servants (‘willing troops’, called to carry on the Father’s mission (see Matt 28:18-20), holding out the message of reconciliation as God’s ambassadors). It’s good to have the dots connected for us!